Aldermen and Organizers Continue to Push For the Passage of the STOP Act: ACLU’s Agreement with the CPD on Stop and Frisk Fails to Provide Necessary Transparency

CHICAGO — Today, aldermen Proco Joe Moreno, Roderick Sawyer and organizers with We Charge Genocide and ChicagoVotes announced their intention to continue their campaign to pass the Stops Transparency Oversight Protection Act (the STOP Act) in Chicago’s City Council. The STOP Act requires the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to collect data on all stops and frisks conducted by the CPD and publish this data on the City of Chicago’s website on a quarterly basis, similar to processes used in New York City and in other cities across the nation.

The aldermen and organizers intended to file the STOP Act at the July 29, 2015 Chicago City Council meeting after announcing they were doing so at a packed press conference. The aldermen delayed filing the ordinance after learning for the first time that the CPD and City were on the verge of reaching an agreement with the ACLU-Illinois as a result of secret, exclusive negotiations on the collection of stop and frisk data.

On Friday, August 7th, ACLU’s deal with the CPD was disclosed to the public. It indicates that the CPD will collect data on stops and frisk conducted by its members, but this information will not be disclosed to the public. Contrary to the provisions of the STOP Act, only the CPD, ACLU and designated Consultant, former Federal Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys, will have access to the pertinent data and relevant information, and they are bound to keep this information confidential under an attorney’s eyes only agreement.

After studying the CPD’s agreement with the ACLU, aldermanic sponsor Proco Joe Moreno found: “The CPD’s agreement with the ACLU is wholly unacceptable. The public has a right to know who is being stopped and frisked and how often these tactics are is being used. People should have the opportunity to make up their own minds as to whether stop and frisk tactics are racially discriminatory or fairly used.”

In addition to requiring the CPD to collect data on all stop and frisks performed by the CPD, the STOP Act would require police officers to give receipts to all who were stopped and frisked, thereby allowing a person to challenge the basis of the encounter if he or she believes it was unfair. The STOP Act also requires CPD members to inform people that they have the right to refuse a search if there is no legal basis for doing so. The agreement with the ACLU does not specify that all people stopped and frisked will receive such necessary receipts and it does not provide that people will be given these warnings.

“Young people have been organizing around stop and frisk tactics and need to have data collected to ensure that stop and frisk is not used as a form of discrimination against people of color. We need more transparency in respect to how these police practices are used in the city of Chicago and we look forward to working with the Mayor to ensure that Chicago continues to be a national leader in responding to the passionate hard work of young activists, not just in Chicago, but all across this nation,” said Alderman Roderick Sawyer.

The STOP Act would help Chicago comply with recommendations made by President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing to publicly publish data on stop and frisk practices. New York City collects and analyzes its stop data and shares it on the NYPD’s website. Using this data, the police have reduced the number of unnecessary stops and frisks performed, and continue to reform their policies as new data becomes available.

According to Page May, an organizer with We Charge Genocide, “Being randomly stopped and frisked is a traumatizing and unfair experience. Studies show that stop and frisk also becomes a tool for profiling individuals based on race, sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity. Collecting and publishing the data is the first step on the road to eradicating this egregious harm.”
Chicago Votes Democracy Corps fellows spent several weeks this summer collecting over 2,500 comment cards in support of the STOP ACT. According to ChicagoVotes executive director Christian Diaz, “Chicago Votes is committed to the goals outlined in the STOP Act. We will continue to educate and engage young voters on the issues that impact their lives. Racial profiling by CPD is a near universal experience for the young black and brown people we train in our programs.”

Recently, Chicago Votes Fellow Robert Moses was stopped and frisked at the Roosevelt Green Line on this way to the Chicago Votes office on suspicion that he was using a stolen Ventra card. “Luckily I had my school ID and state ID to prove it was mine,” said Moses. “I was frisked in that process. They told me that the picture on my U-pass was blurry and that I needed a new one immediately. I responded ‘ok’ and went about my business. There was a group of white students in front of me, and they weren’t stopped simply for trying to board the train. I was racially profiled and stopped and frisked.”

Over 30 other community groups have signed on in support of the STOP Act, including Black Youth Project 100, Moms United Against Violence & Incarceration, and Black Lives Matter – Chicago.

We Charge Genocide is volunteer-run by Chicago residents concerned that the epidemic of police violence continues uninterrupted in Chicago and who seek to equip individuals across the city with tools to more proactively hold police accountable. The name We Charge Genocide comes from a petition filed to the United Nations in 1951, which documented 153 racial killings and other human rights abuses, mostly by the police.

Chicago Votesis a non-partisan organization that increases democratic participation among young people. We are training the next generation of civic leaders through hands on experience like registering voters, canvassing door to door and organizing civic education events. In 2014 Chicago Votes registered 15,000 people to vote and passed landmark legislation for election day voter registration.

Comparison of STOP Act to ACLU-IL deal with CPD and SB1304 (Click on image for larger version)

In light of the announcement of the ACLU of Illinois’s agreement with the City of Chicago, and in the interest of transparency with the people of Chicago affected by this agreement and the Chicago Police Department’s stop and frisk practices, we are sharing the following open letter to the ACLU. The letter outlines the process through which the ACLU negotiated its agreement—a process that excluded and undermined Black youth leadership around stop and frisk; it describes the fundamental differences between the substance of the ACLU/CPD agreement and the STOP Act developed by WCG; and reaffirms our commitment to the struggle against all forms of police violence.

WCG does not naively believe that our communities are harassed, brutalized, and abused by the police simply because there is insufficient data, or because there are not enough laws on the books. We understand police violence to be rooted in historical and systemic anti-blackness that seeks to control, contain, and repress Black bodies through acts of repeated violence. Stop and frisk should be understood as a tool police use to punish Black people just for being. Police violence is always state-sanctioned violence, and further strengthening narrow supervision of police action by elites will never address that. This is why any legislative or law-based campaign to address police violence requires not just policy change, but an actual transformation of power relations between communities of color and the police. The ACLU’s settlement—focused on your own access—does not and cannot accomplish this.

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An Open Letter to the ACLU of Illinois Regarding Stop and Frisk

We are writing in complete dismay and utter disgust upon learning—on the very day we were filing the Stops Transparency Oversight and Protection Act (“STOP Act”) in Chicago’s City Council—that you were in the midst of finalizing a “settlement” with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and Mayor Emanuel’s office on the collection of stop and frisk data by the CPD. As a result of these secret negotiations, Mayor Emanuel requested that our aldermanic sponsors Proco Joe Moreno, Roderick Sawyer and Roberto Maldonado delay filing our ordinance until the September City Council meeting. In light of the Mayor’s request, after consulting with our aldermanic sponsors, we did not file the STOP Act despite We Charge Genocide (WCG) and Chicago Votes’ announcement that we would at a packed press conference that very morning. The press conference itself was built upon several months of organizing and outreach by and to scores of youth of color in the City of Chicago in anticipation of the STOP Act’s introduction at City Council.

The ACLU’s unprincipled failure to inform WCG about these negotiations as soon as they were initiated and invite WCG to participate in them has directly undermined and undercut the organizing and advocacy efforts of Black youth who are targeted by stop and frisk and discriminatory policing in Chicago. You failed to be transparent that these negotiations were taking place and excluded the input of community partners—especially the youth directly impacted by the issue that is the subject of the legislation and who are fighting for their lives. This letter uplifts their critical work and serves as a warning to others who consider the ACLU a collaborator or partner. It is precisely this unprincipled and frankly shameful betrayal of impacted communities and grassroots organizing efforts that the ACLU claims to fight for that gives the organization its reputation for undercutting rather than supporting movements for change across the country.

Now, we learn that as a result of your secret and exclusive negotiations with the City you have reached an agreement with the CPD and Mayor Emanuel’s office on the collection of stop and frisk data, and your agreement does not provide the public with access to that data. Rather, under your agreement, only the ACLU and the designated “Consultant” will receive CPD stop and frisk data and other relevant information. Under your agreement, you are required to keep the information you receive confidential under an “attorney’s eyes only” standard. This result flies in the face of the public transparency and accountability that the STOP Act sought to secure—principles the ACLU allegedly propounds. We want to be clear: We are not in support of your work with the city or its result, which harms our existing work and undermines the broader campaign to end stop and frisk in Chicago.

WCG’s Campaign on Stop and Frisk

WCG raised the issue of racially discriminatory stop and frisk practices in September 2014 in its shadow report to the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT). After the CAT issued its profoundly favorable findings in response to the WCG’s all youth-of-color delegation and the shadow report they drafted, WCG began developing our next steps, including advocating for the collection and publication of all stop and frisk data by the CPD. Over the course of the last ten months, WCG began a broad campaign to educate and mobilize youth of color across Chicago to end CPD’s racially discriminatory stop and frisk practices, which has included launching the #ChiStops campaign, recruiting Chicago Votes to work alongside WCG in seeking the passage of the STOP Act, and going to classrooms and schools across the City to do the hard and essential work of building knowledge and support for the legislation among Black youth as young as eight who face discriminatory stops and abuse at the hands of the CPD every single day.

WCG’s Communications with ACLU-Illinois

The ACLU Illinois has known for several months that WCG intended to seek mandated collection and publication of CPD’s stop and frisk data through Chicago’s City Council. It was first raised to the ACLU-Illinois in November, 2014, and later when WCG members met with the ACLU-Illinois at your office on April 7, 2015. At that meeting, WCG shared a draft of the proposed ordinance, and you indicated the ACLU’s plan was to amend Illinois state law. You also informed us that you supported the STOP Act. You never suggested that WCG should not pursue the campaign to pass the STOP Act in Chicago’s City Council or that the ACLU was interested in working with the City to address this issue. You only asked us to refer any potential plaintiffs to you for a hypothetical lawsuit regarding stop and frisk. We subsequently emailed the ordinance to you and you provided us with feedback and edits which we wholeheartedly accepted.

The Illinois legislature then passed a bill, SB1304, on the collection of stop and frisk data that provided only half of what the STOP Act sought to achieve. WCG reached out to an ACLU-Illinois member on June 5, 2015 to discuss the SB 1304 and discussed the continuing need for the STOP Act. WCG then followed up with you ACLU to get your official endorsement of the STOP Act, which you provided and we informed you on July 1, 2015 that WCG would send out a press release and file the STOP Act on Wednesday, July 29 at the City Council meeting.

In light of this history, it was mind-boggling to learn that you have been in negotiations with the City without informing us prior to July 29th. Common decency—let alone respect for the communities’ interests you claim to represent—would compel you to inform us of these developments. True solidarity, however, would have required you to not only inform us of your negotiations, but reach out to WCG’s youth members before even initiating or participating in them to discuss whether such negotiations should even be entered into, and on what terms.

Instead, you have chosen to shut us out of these negotiations entirely and even initially refused to disclose the possible terms of the “settlement” after the July 29th press conference. You only disclosed the terms of your deal to us on August 6th, the day you signed off on the deal with the CPD and Corporation Counsel, which was the same day you chose to meet with us. It was only then did we learn the true extent in which you undermined and undercut the efforts of WCG, Chicago Votes and Black youth who have been organizing against stop and frisk. Your actions evince a clear lack of respect and disregard for WCG and the communities impacted by the issue, and have completely disrespected and disregarded the many hours of work by the youth of color who are, in fact, those most impacted by stop and frisk.

The ACLU-Illinois’ Unacceptable Deal with the CPD

We Charge Genocide’s STOP Act is rooted in the experiences and ideas of those most directly impacted—young Black and Brown people. It is the strong desire of the youth we work with that data on stops and frisks be not only collected, but be made publicly available on a City website every three months as a guarantee of actual transparency. The settlement you agreed to with the City fails to do this. Now, only you and the Consultant are provided with the relevant data and information—and on a confidential attorney’s eyes only basis. All other members of the public must seek the information through the FOIA process, which makes the information both inaccessible and hard to decipher if obtained. Your agreement with the City thus maintains the status quo, in which an elite knowledge of the FOIA process is required to access and review stop and frisk data. This is unacceptable.

Additionally, we prioritized mechanisms in the STOP Act that would immediately reduce some of the harm caused by stop and frisk practices, e.g. issuing receipts after a stop that include the name and badge number of the police officers and requiring police officers to obtain written documentation of someone’s consent to search. These components of the STOP Act are critical parts of addressing the injustices experienced by young Black Chicagoans every day. They provide people with necessary information to complain about their encounters and attempt to hold the officers responsible while also being provided information as to their rights. Your settlement, however, does not include these pieces; it instead places more power, trust, and responsibility in the hands of those who brutalize us: the cops and the courts. If you had informed us of your negotiations with the City and respected the leadership of young Black people, the ACLU-Illinois would have known that we consider these elements to be non-negotiable aspects of any legislative measures regarding stop and frisk.

We do not naively believe that our communities are harassed, brutalized, and abused by the police simply because there is insufficient data, or because there are not enough laws on the books.

We understand police violence to be rooted in historical and systemic anti-blackness that seeks to control, contain, and repress Black bodies through acts of repeated violence. Stop and frisk should be understood as a tool police use to punish Black people just for being. Police violence is always state-sanctioned violence, and further strengthening narrow supervision of police action by elites will never address that. This is why any legislative or law-based campaign to address police violence requires not just policy change, but an actual transformation of power relations between communities of color and the police. Your settlement—focused on your own access—does not and cannot accomplish this.

What you have “won” is fundamentally different from the STOP Act, both in its means and in its ends. Our goals are rooted in the experiences of those most directly impacted; yours are not. Our movement is rooted in a political analysis that recognizes the need to shift power away from police and into our communities; your policy “victory” is not. Our motivation is rooted in a theory of change that prioritizes movement building and centering the leadership of those most affected; yours is not. Now, because of your self-serving interest in pushing simplistic policy changes, we and our allies face a much harder task pushing the critical package of reforms included in the STOP Act but ignored in your settlement. There is no such thing as an easy victory, and yours has come at a high cost.

Furthermore, as we expressed in our August 6th meeting, it is highly disingenuous to claim this victory as a result of the usual non-profit legal advocacy work of the ACLU. The City’s desire to negotiate with you has much to do with WCG and the larger Black Lives Matter movement’s demands for radical change. Your settlement represents just one of many efforts by City officials across the country attempting to co-opt our movement by engaging with less threatening groups. Passage of the STOP Act would be public recognition of the real, grassroots power of young Black and Brown Chicagoans; instead the City wisely sought to settle into an ongoing relationship with a legal organization that poses no real threat to the status quo. In other words, you were used.

Data collection through the STOP Act was the first of many steps in our plan to end to stop and frisk in Chicago. You have disrespected us. You have undermined our movement. You have wasted our time and that of our allies. But, your refusal to acknowledge or take seriously our leadership has neither silenced nor weakened us. We understand freedom will take a while and will not come without a fight. We are proud of what we have accomplished. We are proud of the base-building and power-building we have achieved. We are proud of our young Black leaders and their ongoing work. We are proud of our success. We will continue and build on that strong foundation in the coming weeks, months, and years. That is how we will win. That is how we will make Black lives matter.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Dear Friends,

Thank you again for your crucial support of the STOP Act. We are writing to give you an update about the Act and other developments.

As you know, we planned to file the Act in City Council last Wednesday, July 29th, under the leadership of aldermen Moreno, Sawyer, and Maldonado. Before the City Council meeting, We Charge Genocide and Chicago Votes organized a robust and well-attended press conference at which directly affected youth speakers from each group and all three of those aldermen expressed support and the intention to file the ordinance.

During the City Council meeting following the press conference, Mayor Rahm Emanuel approached Alderman Sawyer and asked that the alderman wait until a later City Council meeting to file the ordinance because the City was actively exploring changes to relevant CPD policies.

As a result, the STOP Act was not filed on July 29th.

On Friday, August 7, as you may have seen, the CPD and the ACLU of IL released a set of agreements that does not include public disclosure of stop and frisk data, and instead provides for oversight by a former federal judge. The ACLU’s agreement provides for no more public disclosure than is required beyond the existing FOIA process and, in fact, specifies that all stop and frisk data given by CPD to the ACLU and the monitor will be kept “confidential”. This is in clear contrast to the goals of our work.

Unlike the STOP Act, the agreement announced Friday also does not include receipts for stops that do not result in frisks, searches, or arrests; nor does it require officers to inform persons stopped of their right to refuse to consent to a search, or require officers to obtain written documentation of consent.

We Charge Genocide is deeply disappointed by the substance of the agreement, which falls short of the basic standards of transparency and accountability which would have been required under the STOP Act.

In addition, we condemn the back-door process through which this agreement was created. That process deliberately excluded the voices of young people of color who have been organizing in support of the STOP Act and who are most affected by CPD’s stop & frisk practices.

Finally, We Charge Genocide is greatly angered by the behavior of the ACLU — which has met with us numerous times over the past several months and has claimed to support the STOP Act. We were shocked to find out that the ACLU has, throughout our numerous conversations, deliberately obfuscated the fact that they were also negotiating with the City, and refused to include us in these negotiations.

We Charge Genocide’s #ChiStops campaign is committed to ending stop & frisk in Chicago, and so will proceed with our Youth Speak-Out Against Stop & Frisk and Police Violence scheduled for this Sunday, August 9th from 2-5pm at Village Leadership Academy, 1001 W Roosevelt Rd., Chicago, IL 60608. Please join us on the one year anniversary of Mike Brown’s murder as we re-commit to ending all forms of police violence here in Chicago and across the country.

Next week, We Charge Genocide will publish a public statement addressing the ACLU’s actions. the wide gulf that remains between the ACLU/CPD agreement announced on Friday and the STOP Act, and the changes still desperately needed to achieve a basic level of transparency and police accountability in Chicago.

We Charge Genocide Holds Press Conference for Introduction of STOP Act before City Council

Today We Charge Genocide and Chicago Votes introduced the Stop, Transparency, Oversight and Protection (STOP) Act at a press conference on the second floor of Chicago’s City Hall before the City Council meeting.

Aldermen Moreno, 1st Ward, Alderman Maldonado, 26th Ward, and Alderman Sawyer, 6th Ward spoke in favor of the new ordinance, which would increase data transparency for policing in Chicago, making it possible to better assess the effectiveness and fairness of Chicago policing generally, and stop and frisk tactics specifically.

The ordinance would require the Chicago Police Department to collect and share data for all stops that it performs, including demographic information of those stopped, the badge numbers of officers involved, as well as the location, reason, and result of the stop. The Chicago Police Department would also be required to give receipts to those stopped, as well as to collect and share the data on a quarterly basis, so that various programs can be evaluated for effectiveness and fairness.

The STOP Act would help Chicago to catch up with New York City and other districts, in terms of data transparency and police accountability. New York City collects and analyzes its stop data, and shares it in an accessible format. Using this data, the police have reduced the number of unnecessary stops and frisks performed, and continue to reform their policies as new data comes out.

Speaking to the number and effect of stop-and-frisks, Gillian Giles, a youth organizer with #ChiStops, said that “overpolicing is a problem. Being stopped by the police is terrifying. Being stopped and frisked by the police is at best degrading. Being stopped and frisk by police when you’ve done nothing wrong is unnecessary, and last year 250,000 Chicagoans were stopped without committing a crime.”

A recent report put out by the ACLU of Illinois stresses how the CPD’s insufficient and incomplete data collection methods make real accountability and oversight all but impossible. In addition to requiring police to document and account for all stops and frisks, the the STOP Act would require police to give those stopped a receipt detailing the transaction.

This would be a significant step towards transparency and would allow communities and individuals alike to be better informed and evaluate the practice for themselves.

According to Page May, organizer with We Charge Genocide, “In this moment, during this national conversation about police violence and profiling, we need to do better. Passing the STOP Act would be a significant step forward. The STOP Act would allow Chicago to catch up to other cities like New York, and get data transparency right, right now. It would give us more tools to evaluate stop and frisk, and would allow us to develop a more complete picture of the impact of these police practices on communities across the city.”

In addition to ChiStops, over 30 other community groups have signed on in support of the STOP Act, including the ACLU of Illinois, Black Youth Project 100, Chicago Votes, Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, and Black Lives Matter – Chicago.

#ChiStops: Empowering young people through popular education and leadership training to resist racial profiling and other biased policing.We Charge Genocide is volunteer-run by Chicago residents concerned that the epidemic of police violence continues uninterrupted in Chicago and who seek to equip individuals across the city with tools to more proactively hold police accountable. The name We Charge Genocide comes from a petition filed to the United Nations in 1951, which documented 153 racial killings and other human rights abuses, mostly by the police.